Using Online Help under Windows XP SP2
Appendix E, Using the Help

The HTML help system provides easy navigation online. You can customize some aspects of the help system to suit your preferences. The following features of the help system make it accessible and customizable:

• You can view this help system on any computer. Simply copy the entire documentation/help folder to the new location, then open the main HTML page named help/html/_start_helpsystem.html in your Web browser. You can copy the help folder from the software CD.

• Links provide context. The context links at the top of each topic show you in which chapter the topic exists, and what the previous and next topics are. For the links in the index, you can point the mouse cursor at the target icon (without clicking) to display the title of the topic where the index entry exists. The Search tool shows which chapter (or appendix) each result topic is in.

• You can also use the Search tool to find anything in the Help. Search results can include excerpts such as those created by popular Internet search engines.

• The Navigation frame can be resized. You can drag the bar to the left to make the frame wider.

• A style sheet controls the formatting. The topics contain very few embedded font tags. The help system remains functional if you use your own style sheet or change the font size and styles your browser uses. You can also edit the style/simple.css file to modify the styles. (Make a backup copy before editing this file.)

• There is good contrast between foreground and background colours. You can also edit the colours used in the style sheet. For example, you can change the background colour of the Topic frame or the colour of the links.

• The Help opens with the Contents in the Navigation panel. If you prefer to show the Index or Search tool (with or without options showing), you can edit the _start_helpsystem.html file. See the instructions in this file to comment and uncomment the appropriate lines.

About Your Web Browser

Since you view the Help with a Web browser, it is helpful to use the Back button and other browser features such as Find on This Page and favorite pages. (Since search results go to a temporary HTML file, you cannot set the Search Results page as a favorite. Instead, you can click the Back button to return to the search results.) You can open a new window to show the Help in more than one window at the same time. You can also print topics from the browser, and change the size of the fonts the Help uses.

To use the Search tool or Zoom Image button, JavaScript must be active in your Web browser. Since the Help uses frames, your browser must also support frames.

Some links change two HTML pages at the same time. For example, when you click a chapter title in the Contents, the chapter page in the Contents changes, and the list of topics appears in the Topic frame. To undo this type of action, you need to click the Back button twice. In most browsers, the shortcut for the Back command is Backspace.

As another example, you might click Contents after performing a search. You can return to the search results by clicking the browser's Back button.

If you resize the browser window while the Search panel is showing, the HTML form may display incorrectly. You can reload the page to correct the display.

You cannot resize the Navigation frame in Netscape 4.7 on IRIX.

In Netscape 4.7 on IRIX, the Search tool does not show a 'processing' icon. After you click Search, the 'Search Results' heading appears. It takes a few seconds for the list of results to appear below the heading.